When did Ron Paul become the GOP presidential candidate-who-must-not-be-named?

"Daily Show" host Jon Stewart asked that question on his show Monday night and in doing so he sparked a discussion among the media hordes that has produced more than a few mea culpas and could perhaps – perhaps – lead to more coverage of the libertarian Texas congressmen in the future.

In particular, Mr. Stewart took aim at the fact that Mr. Paul narrowly lost the Ames, Iowa, straw poll to Michele Bachmann yet was almost entirely left out of the journalistic political postmortem.

“How did libertarian Ron Paul become the 13th floor in a hotel?” said Stewart.

It’s true that the Ames vote is hardly representative of even Iowa, much less the nation as a whole. But as Stewart added, “He’s the one guy in the field, agree with him or don’t agree with him, who doesn’t just regurgitate talking points or change what he believes to fit the audience in front of him.”

So why do the media ignore Ron Paul? And please, if you’re a Paulite, please read this whole thing before you take down our e-mail with angry missives.

They ignore him because he has little chance of winning or expanding his base beyond the relatively small number of Americans who agree with him that relinking the dollar to gold would be a good thing.

"Paul might be able to get upwards of 25 percent of the vote in next year’s Iowa caucus, but I wonder how much upside his candidacy has beyond his very dedicated core of supporters,” writes Mr. Silver.

No, the media are after what is termed a “good story.” And that’s kind of a circular criteria, in the sense that the media rule what a good story is. Thus Jon Huntsman continues to get fairly positive coverage, despite the fact that he got 69 votes at the Iowa caucus and barely breaks 2 percent in national polls.

We’ll say it here: Ron Paul deserves at least as much ink (or as many pixels) as Jon Huntsman.